All the Way To Barrow, Alaska

When people asked why I moved to Los Angeles, I smirked before claiming L.A. was as far as I could run from my childhood without a boat. But that wasn’t true so I left for Sacramento, where I tell the curious the same story.

But it still isn’t true.

Someday I will continue crawling northward up the Pacific coast until I run out of land, and then I will step into the water and keep walking until the broken little boy who operates my brain drifts away with the tide.

If the current is kind he may wash up in China, where he’ll continue drifting eastward until he arrives back where he began. “Why did you come back?” his old neighbors will ask. They’ll be 187 years old, but he’ll still be a boy.

“This is as far as I could get from Los Angeles without a boat,” he’ll smirk, and then he will smile and wave before heading east again, still looking for home.

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I want to leave my comment, but it is too personal, it is almost too personal to write privately. I hope we cross paths again in our individual searching for that elusive place or person that will feel like home.

The 12 Step programs describe changing locations to fill the vast emptiness in our souls as “doing a geographic.” As I understand it, when we move, we’re hoping different surroundings on the outside will heal what’s broken on the inside. As I discovered when I moved to the other side of the continent, we usually find that we brought our pain with us. It was only when I honestly looked at myself that I recognized that the judgmental, shaming voices I’ve been hearing as long as I can remember were of my own creation. The voices are still there, but I’ve been able to turn down their volume so I can hear the world telling me I am both lovable and loved. I would rather it hadn’t taken 70 years to get to this place, but it was still worth the effort. As for you, James, you too are both lovable and loved.